


I’d Rather Fuel the Fantasy Than Deal With This Alone

by theshipsfirstmate



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, angsty angst, post 4x18
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 10:29:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6514468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This is not how they find their way back to each other. All three of them deserve better than that. But it’s something.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	I’d Rather Fuel the Fantasy Than Deal With This Alone

_Title from “[Talk Me Down](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DLo3lxS-6joY&t=YWVmYmFiZWJiYWZmYjI0OWUzMTM4MTI2ODhhZTdjZTJhMTI4Njg5ZixMWTlmZjc3aw%3D%3D)” by Troye Sivan._

**I’d Rather Fuel the Fantasy Than Deal With This Alone**

Once Lance arrives at the hospital, the team disperses, giving him some space to grieve, letting the storm cloud that hangs above scatter them to the wind. John disappears almost as soon as Felicity extricates herself from his arms, and she watches Oliver and Thea walk out together – leaning heavily on each other like A-frame support beams – before turning back to choke down more tears at the sight of Laurel’s father slumped at her bedside.

Felicity can’t fathom his grief, even as she faces down the looming monolith of her own. Losing two daughters, three times over, it’s no wonder the poor man’s heart keeps trying to stop itself from beating. She wonders if she should call her mother to come be with him, before realizing she left her phone lying on her desk in the rush to get there.

She asks the nurse to call her a cab, barely registering the woman’s assent or the entirety of the ride to Palmer Tech. Her eyes are starting to swell with tears that won’t stop coming, even though her makeup’s long been wiped away, and there’s a buzzing in her ears that mutes the sounds of the outside world, leaving only her inner monologue to be heard with any kind of clarity.

It’s classic shock, she knows it is, and by the time she reaches her office, she barely has the energy to make it to her desk chair before collapsing, the weight of the world crashing down around her.

_Laurel’s dead._

Dead, mere minutes after she was fine. She was strong, _so strong,_ and she was going to pull through until, all of a sudden, she wasn’t. The feeling is like emotional whiplash. One of Felicity’s only friends, maybe the most courageous women she’s ever known, wiped off the Earth by nothing less than pure evil. Felicity’s shoulders shake with silent sobs and she beats her fists on the the glass top of her desk, wondering if it might hurt less to just shatter the thing to shards with her bare hands.

Then, like always, like rapid fermentation, the grief inside her starts to morph into something else, something bitter and guilty. Because when she walked out of the bunker that night, she might have been walking away from Oliver, but he wasn’t the only one she left behind. If she had been on the comms tonight, maybe things would be different. If she’d had their backs, maybe Laurel would still be alive. If only, if only, if only. It’s a cycle of guilt that Felicity knows well, she’s spent a few years studying a master.

And then suddenly, like she’s imagined him into existence, Oliver’s there in front of her, raising his hand to knock at her office door until their eyes meet and he drops the clenched fist back to his side. The buzzing in her ears stops on a dime.

He looks even worse than he did in the hospital, less lost and more haunted. She’s surprised, though, to see him in street clothes.

“I thought you’d be long gone,” she admits. She regrets her tone almost immediately, but the blow barely lands, he’s already dug himself too deep.

“I don’t want to put the suit back on.” His voice scratches from his throat, just above a whisper, as he turns his head to look out the window. She can’t tell if he means just tonight, or something more permanent. “Especially not with her blood on it.”

The words bring that tell-tale sting to the back of her throat, and her chin quivers even as she squares her shoulders, willing herself not to completely crumple in front of him. That’s the last thing any of them need right now.

“And the others?”

“Thea bolted,” he recounts, turning back to face her. “Suited up and hit the streets. I made her promise to text me every few hours, but I…”

“And Digg?”

“I don’t know.” He shakes his head, then drops it. She’s watching him closely enough to see a few more tears drop from his eyes, and her legs carry her a few steps closer. Not enough to touch him, but enough to almost want to. “I hope he’s home with Lyla, but I don’t know.”

Felicity finds herself hoping the same, knowing her friend is wracking himself with guilt right now, and hoping he’s at least doing it in the arms of someone who loves him. She doesn’t let herself consider what that means for the two of them.

“I really want a drink,” she admits, shaking the thought away. It’s only then that she realizes she hasn’t really had one since before Christmas. She’s barely stopped moving long enough to sleep, always one to bury herself in her work instead of the bottle. “But I wasn’t…it doesn’t seem right somehow.”

Laurel told her all about it one night, back when they thought they had lost Oliver to the League for good. Felicity had been so sure that no one could understand the feeling in her chest, like someone had taken to her heart with a melon baller, until she realized that the woman standing in front of her had known that exact pain almost decade earlier. Laurel had used alcohol to cauterize her wounds for the better part of her adult life – before triumphing over that as well – and Felicity’s not sure it wouldn’t be disrespectful for them to do the same as they mourn her.

Contrastingly, she’s almost desperate to numb out some of this pain, and so when Oliver announces, after a long moment, “I don’t think she’d mind,” that decides it.

* * *

He takes her to a bar she didn’t even know existed, in a part of town she’s only ever visited once before, on a sketchy stakeout back in his Hood days. A nod at the doorman and a passed bill to the bartender gets them their own bottle, a pair of glasses and two stools at the darkened end of the bar.

“This okay?” He holds up the tequila, and Felicity barely looks at it, just nods. It’s a change from what she knows as his usual, but maybe it makes sense. Vodka is the Arrow’s drink, whiskey is for his bonding moments with Diggle. Maybe the harsh liquor will burn away what’s left of them. Maybe that would be for the best. She’s not sure how much more heartache she can take.

They have their first drink in silence. He pours with shaky hands, sloshing maybe too much into her glass, and she takes maybe too big a sip, sputtering out a cough that sounds like a sob. He downs his in one quick motion, barely gasping on the other side of it.

“Tommy and I gave her her first drink, you know?” He grates the confession out after another long moment. “Just another thing I’ll never forgive myself for.”

“Oliver…” She can’t do this tonight, can’t sit here with him and assure him that there isn’t metaphorical blood on his hands, especially when the physical reality is so glaring, caked nearly black under his nails. She can’t spend the last of herself trying to convince him of something he’ll never want to believe.

“Tommy called it a lunchbox,” he continues, tracing along the rim of the glass. “It was beer, orange juice, and I think amaretto?”

She turns up her nose. “Sounds disgusting.”

“I don’t remember it being terrible,” he muses with something that might almost be a smile. “But to be fair we were thirteen years old. Our palettes weren’t exactly matured.”

They must have made plans, those teenagers. Felicity imagines them: young and rich and reckless, not a care in the world, let alone cause to believe they’d be taken from it before they were able to see each other grow old. She wonders if Oliver’s been thinking of Tommy since the moment Damien Darhk ran one of his arrows through the woman he and his best friend had both loved.

After their second drink, he reaches up to the bar to take her hand, and Felicity lets him, lacing her fingers through his. It feels so familiar, her heart would ache more if it were physically possible.

He must be exhausted, but his whole body is still rigid with tension, she can feel it in his grip just like she felt it in his shoulders when she hugged him without hesitation in the hospital hallway. At that moment, it had been like a magnet was pulling them together, but she hasn’t touched him since, fought valiantly against the urge to fall into his arms when they were pronouncing Laurel dead.

“That’s everyone, you know,” he says, like he knows what she’s thinking, like it’s running on a constant loop in his mind too. “Everyone I’ve ever loved has bled out in front of me.”

His father. Shado. Tommy. His mother. Sara. Thea. Now Laurel.

Oh, and her too.

“You got some of us back,” Felicity offers without really thinking, overwhelmed by the thought of him tallying up the red on his ledger. “You saved some of us.”

“Laurel was the hero.” It’s like he’s answering a question she didn’t ask, completing a comparison she wasn’t making. He cheats the system then, taking a swig straight from the bottle and coming up bitter. “This would usually be the time when I would warn you to stay away from me. But you’re doing a pretty good job of that.”

“That’s not fair,” she bites back with an angry sniffle, pulling her hand from his grasp. She wishes there was an easy way out of this familiar, brutal cycle, wishes there was a way to untangle them from all this heartbreak, wishes there were a slice of lime for her to bite down on. “The last thing I ever wanted to do was leave you.”

That’s still true, as much as she’s tried to fight it. That knowledge and the weight of her grief keeps Felicity anchored to her barstool, even though part of her knows she should probably leave. After drink number three, she has a confession of her own to make.

“I was always worried she was going to start hating me,” she admits. “Because of us, because of what you two used to have.”

“I think I was too,” he nods in agreement. “I don’t know if I could ever be that selfless.”

“She loved you and still…” The end of Felicity’s sentence chokes off, punctuated with another sob. “I’ve never had a friend like that.”

“She gave us her blessing,” he tells her, and she holds her breath until it hurts when he adds, “right before…” 

“She’s strong, your friend,” the doctor at the hospital had told them. She hadn’t be wrong about that.

After four tequilas (or eight, since he’s nearly pouring doubles) Felicity is reminded that getting drunk with your ex is never a good idea. She doesn’t take his hand again, that might be too much, but grief and tequila have them both slumping on their stools and so she settles for resting her forehead against Oliver’s shoulder.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he murmurs from somewhere above her, and she can feel his words, which are starting to slur together, rumble though his chest. “I don’t know how to keep anything together, I don’t know what to do.”

“You’re going to do what you’ve always done,” she replies, worried it sounds disingenuous. “You’re going to be a hero, you’re going to keep the city safe.”

“I can’t even keep my own team safe,” he mumbles. “We keep getting beat, and losing our own, and now that Darhk has his powers back…”

He ducks down so his forehead is pressed to hers, whispering an admission that makes her heart take a stutter step. _“I don’t know how to do this without you.”_

She shudders and feels him pulling away, realizing her eyes have squeezed shut against more tears. Existential despair is usually a good hint that it’s time for last call, but Felicity allows them each one more drink. Extenuating circumstances, and all that. 

After five, it’s time to go. They stand on wobbly legs, and when Oliver instinctively reaches out to grab her arm, she leans into him instead of pulling away. She calls them another car, entering the address in the app without a thought, and when the driver pulls up to Palmer Tech, Oliver blinks at her in confusion.

“Felicity,” he says, in his low, commanding tone of voice that never fails to rile up her combative instinct, even now as she’s weary and a little drunk. “You should go home.”

“This is home,” she admits, glancing up in time to see his eyes widen in surprise. “I mean, I’m still living in the corporate penthouse. I just couldn't… I haven’t even been able to think about getting a new place.”

On another night, he might able to read between the lines of that admission. But tonight, there isn’t any emotional space for subtext.

He still asks, though. “Can I walk you up?”

It’s just so he knows that she’s safe. That’s the lie Felicity tells herself as the elevator rises. Even when he takes her hand again. Even when the door pings opens at her floor and Oliver asks again, voice even smaller. “Can I stay?”

Even when she realizes that she asked him the same thing, at the same time.

_“Will you stay?”_

They nod in unison, like something’s been decided, and she pulls him into the cold corporate apartment that feels nothing like the home they built together, once upon a time.

She’s too tired and tipsy for modesty once they reach the bedroom and finds herself beyond grateful when he doesn’t even flinch, just follows suit and starts silently stripping down beside her. She turns away carefully to unhook her bra and slide a tank top on, but tosses her discarded clothes to the ground without concern. Oliver, of course, folds his shirt neatly, laying it on the armchair in the corner of the room.

She’s missed him like this, Felicity realizes, sneaking a glance when he’s turned to drape his pants over the back of the chair. She’s missed him in maybe every way possible, but especially like this, a picture of the domesticity they worked so hard to find and threw away so easily. Their life in Ivy Town might have bored her to tears, but Oliver was so happy there, the reminder a painful contrast to miserable man before her.

The two of them crawl into bed, and that’s even more familiar than holding his hand, as they default to sides of the mattress that were claimed in another lifetime. Felicity hesitates for just a moment, lying still on her back, aware that Oliver’s doing the same beside her. She stares at the ceiling, and it’s like she can see their grief looming over them, draped down almost far enough to wrap them up completely, a blackout curtain enveloping the generic white sheet and comforter set she had her assistant buy for an apartment she barely does any living in.

When the sound of another broken sob escapes her throat, they reach for each other at the same time.

Felicity hasn’t slept well at all since moving out of the loft, but tonight, grief and exhaustion pull her under almost immediately. The only thing she feels are Oliver’s arms banded around her, almost too tight. The only thing she smells is his familiar scent. The only thing she sees is a solitary yellow bird, soaring free through her dreamscape.

* * *

She expects to wake up in the morning and find him gone, but there’s something even more tragic about opening her eyes to the familiar sight of Oliver’s face just inches from her own. His arm is slung over her hip like it’s been a thousand times before, his thumb drawn up enough to slide underneath her tank top, tracing an absent, distracting pattern. Felicity can’t remember a time – even during their months of blissful domestic ignorance – when she woke before him. That this is how she finally gets to see him: brow still furrowed, dark circles remaining under his eyes despite the hours of rest, is just another tick to add to their list of cosmic slights.

He’ll have to go when he wakes up, she knows that much for certain. This is not how they find their way back to each other, all three of them deserve better than that. But it’s something.

She’s thought a lot, in the weeks since they called it off, about the wedding they might have had. About the way things would have looked, the people that would have been there, the things they would have said to each other. She realizes now that, in every iteration she imagined, Laurel was standing up there beside them. That’s something else that will never happen now.

As for vows, the ones they said in front of Cupid, while close to perfect, will always be tainted in her mind, glossed over with the shiny veneer of the ruse. Besides, if Felicity’s honest with herself, this is one tiny area where’s she’s always considered herself a bit of a traditionalist.

From the day Oliver lay shot and bleeding in the back seat of her Mini to the moment she lay shot and bleeding in the back seat of a limo, they’ve pretty much run the gamut of “in sickness and in health,” and she’s got money enough to cover “richer or poorer” for as long as they both shall live. A life with Oliver Queen has brought her to highs and lows the full spectrum of which she didn’t entirely comprehend until she met him as the Arrow, and now, in the face of one of the worst things they’ve ever had to endure, Felicity can’t help but wonder if the only way to get through it for the better is together.

His eyes start to flicker open as the daylight splices through the shutters, and she can’t bear to watch the moment when the tragedy of yesterday comes flooding back to him today. So she shuts her eyes and presses her lips to his. This might not be their moment, but they can have a few seconds of selfishness, surely they deserve at least that much. Oliver tastes like sleep and old tequila, and something else Felicity has tried in vain to erase from her memory over the last few weeks. But none of that matters.

Maybe, for now, it’s enough just to have and to hold.


End file.
